Tong Tran Temple

Tong Tran temple locates at An Cau village, Tong Tran commune, Phu Cu district, Hung Yen province. This place worships Tong Tran – the First Doctoral Candidate of Vietnam under the old system.

Legend has it that Tong Tran was born under the reign of Ly dynasty at An Cau village, Tong Tran commune, Phu Cu district. His family has the tradition of learning, and his parents lived so friendly and kind with people. When he was 3 years old, he was very good at prosody. So, his parents named him Trân. When he was 5 years old, he was so smart that he could know everything. Espeacially, when Tong Tran was 7 years old, he went to the capital to compete. And he passed the 3 exams with the highest position. 2 years later, he became the First Doctoral Candidate. After that, Tong Tran came back to his hometown to show his respect to his ancestor, visited his parents and get married to his wife Cuc Hoa. He built a house at Phu Oanh village for his wife and his mother, then he returned to the capital.

3 months later, the King sent Tong Tran to China as the King’s envoy. Finding that Tong Tran was so young, the Chinese king showed contempt for him and found many ways to test his talents. However, Tong Tran responded to all Chinese King’s hardship excellently. As a result, he was praised the first talent in 18 vassal countries, and Chinese King would like to give his daughter in marriage with Tong Tran. But Tong Tran refused. Therefore, he was imprisoned at Linh Long pagoda for 100 days without food and water. At that time, Tong Tran ate the Buddha statue which was made of sweet soup and drink water which was used for offering the Buddha. One more time, Tong Tran was appointed to be the Two-countries’ First Doctoral candidate.

After 10 years of being envoy in China, Tong Tran came back to his hometown. At that time, his wife Cuc Hoa was forced to get married to another person by her father. Tong Tran disguised himself as a mendicant to get information from Cuc Hoa. When he found that Cuc Hoa was still faithful with him, he picked up her wife to their home. When Tong Tran was 60 years old, he left his position in the court and returned to his hometown to be a teacher.

in order to commemorate his great merits, the King and people built a temple to worship him. This temple was built under the old background of his house.After Tong Tran passed away,

Tong Tran Temple used to be a revolutionary base during the resistance war against French colonialism. In 1950, the temple was completely destroyed. After many times of upgrading, the temple was completely restored in 1998, with the structure of front-worshipping room and harem. Today, there have some parallel sentences praising the merit of Tong Tran. Tong Tran temple was recognized as the cultural relic at national level in 1991. Every year, the temple festival is held from the 10th and 14th of April in Lunar Calendar. The 13th to the 17th are 2 main days of the festival.